Alex was born in Canberra, Australia into a middle class family where his father worked as a teacher of physics and astronomy and his mother was a nurse from Sydney.

His parents have mixed European ancestry of Greek, Irish and Scottish.

They recently gave million for a 14-bed neonatal intensive care unit at the Alberta Children’s Hospital earlier this year, a cause that hit close to home for the parents as their son needed neonatal intensive care when he was born eight weeks early.